How to write a maker comment for your launch

Write the long version once, then cut it down for each site.

Product Hunt's guide, Hacker News's tips and Nukkadly's form ask for nearly the same things. Put them in this order.

1. Who you are. One line. "I'm Priya, I run support at a four-person SaaS and built this on weekends."
2. What it is, in a different sentence from the tagline. The Launch HN instructions advise against repeating your title in the text, so you get a second chance to explain what it does.
3. Why you built it. The specific moment the problem annoyed you enough to build something. This is the part readers remember.
4. How it works. What the user does in the first few minutes. On Hacker News, add the technical detail: the stack, the hard part, the tradeoff you made.
5. What it doesn't do yet. Name the gaps before a commenter does. It makes the rest of the note easier to believe.
6. One specific question. The kind of feedback you want, asked so that someone can answer it in a sentence.

On Product Hunt you can also mention a launch offer if you have one. Product Hunt's guide lists it as optional.

Here is the same note for a made-up product, Shiftnote, a shared handover log for small support teams. First the full version, sized for Product Hunt:

Hi, I'm Priya. I lead support at a small SaaS company, and for two years our shift handovers lived in a Slack thread that nobody could search.

Shiftnote is a shared log where each person writes what's still open when their shift ends. The next person sees those items first when they log in, and can mark them done or pass them on.

I built it after a customer waited three days for a refund because the note about it scrolled away over a weekend. That one hurt.

You can try it with a demo team, no signup needed. It doesn't connect to help desks yet. You copy ticket links in by hand, and that's the next thing I'm building.

One question for anyone who runs a support rota: what do you hand over at the end of a shift that a ticket system doesn't capture?

That's about 760 characters, well under Product Hunt's 5,000 and inside Nukkadly's 1,500. For Nukkadly you can post it as written.

For Hacker News, keep the same facts and change the emphasis. Drop the warm-up, add how it's built, and keep the tone plain:

Shiftnote is a handover log for support teams that work in shifts. Each person leaves a list of open items when they sign off, and the next person sees those first.

I lead support at a small company. Our handovers lived in a Slack thread, and a refund request got lost over a weekend. I wanted something that shows the open items first and nothing else.

It's a Rails app with Postgres. The part that took longest was deciding what "still open" means when two people edit the same item across a shift change. Right now the last edit wins and the item history is kept, which I'm not sure is right.

There's a demo team you can use without signing up. No help desk integration yet.

I'd like to hear from people who've built or run shift handovers. How did you handle edits that overlap a shift change?

All of these details are invented for the example. Use your own story, and only state what's true about your product.

Product Hunt

Write like a person, not a press release. That's Product Hunt's own advice. Ask for feedback, never for upvotes. Product Hunt says "Please upvote!" breaks its rules. Add your co-makers to the launch so they can reply under their own accounts.

Hacker News

Hacker News is the strictest about tone. From its guidelines and moderator tips:

• Write the text yourself. HN's moderator asks makers not to use an LLM to generate or edit any of it, and the site guidelines say not to post generated text.
• Drop anything that sounds like marketing. The Launch HN instructions, which HN says non-YC startups should follow too, warn against superlatives like fastest, biggest, first and best.
• Don't turn it into a feature list. Work the details into sentences.
• Link earlier HN threads about the project if there are any. Readers like those.
• Post from a personal username, not your company name.

If you submit a link, you can add your text in the same submission. If the text doesn't appear, post it as the first comment.

Nukkadly

The field asks two questions in its placeholder: "What problem made you start, and what feedback would help you?" Answer both. Commenters on Nukkadly tag their feedback as useful, confusing, pricing or missing, so a question that maps to one of those gets clearer answers. "Is the pricing page clear about what the free plan includes?" invites a pricing comment you can act on.

A vague question gets compliments. A narrow one gets information.

Ask one question, or two at most. Three questions in a row reads like a survey and people skip it.

• "We're thrilled to announce." Start with who you are or what it does.
• Thanking everyone in advance. One "thanks for looking" at the end is enough.
• Claims you can't back up. "The easiest", "10x faster" and "loved by teams" invite the first reply to ask for proof.
• A list of every feature. Pick the two or three that matter and put them in sentences.
• Requests to vote or share. Every site above forbids or discourages them, and readers notice.
• Repeating the description. If the note says the same thing as the description field, it adds nothing.

The comment starts the conversation. You have to keep it going.

• Reply to every question while the launch is live. The Launch HN instructions say to take breaks but not leave the thread for long.
• Answer critics without getting defensive. The same instructions suggest finding something to agree with first, then answering. You don't need to win the argument. Other readers are watching how you respond.
• Don't let friends post booster comments. HN's moderator says users spot them and treat them as spam.
• Note every repeated question. If three people ask the same thing, the answer belongs on your landing page.

If the launch stays quiet anyway, the guide on what to do after a quiet launch helps you find out why before you try again.

• Says who you are in the first line
• Explains what the product does without repeating the tagline
• Tells the real reason you built it
• Names at least one thing it doesn't do yet
• Ends with one question someone can answer in a sentence
• No hype words, no feature list, no request for votes
• Fits the field: 5,000 characters on Product Hunt, 1,500 on Nukkadly
• For Hacker News, written by you and read aloud once

Write the tagline and description first with the guide on writing a launch tagline, and keep the rest of the listing kit in the SaaS launch checklist. When the note is ready, submit your product to Nukkadly and paste it into "Why I built this". The guidelines cover what can be listed.